CLEVELAND - After being twisted and torn over Donald Trump’s candidacy, Wisconsin Republicans have come to Cleveland searching for unity, something that hasn’t been this elusive in quite some time.

“We need to unify,” said party activist Mary Buestrin, a longtime member of theRepublican National Committee. “It’s a bit disconcerting to me that I have to actually work on people (to back Trump) that should be automatically just doing this.”

There may be no better window into the turmoil Trump has caused in his party than the Wisconsin GOP, which was split every which way over the man who will become the Republican standard-bearer at this week’s four-day convention.

The divisions are all the more striking when you consider that this state was a model of Republican solidarity during the pitched warfare over Gov. Scott Walker’s tenure, with conservative leaders, conservative media, tea party activists, business groups, social conservatives, party regulars and elected officials achieving a remarkable degree of cohesion while taking and holding power in Wisconsin.

“There’s been a little splintering of the Walker coalition, but we’ll get it back together,” state GOP chairman Brad Courtney said.

“The last five or six years have strengthened the team (and) put us in a situation where we can handle something like this and get through it in a good way and not be fractured and all over the place,” Stephan Thompson, a former state party director and political aide to Walker, said of his fellow Republicans.

“It’s really just mind-boggling,” said Mike Tate, who did battle with a GOP juggernaut in Wisconsin when he served as state chairman of the Democratic Party.

“We have two of the stronger state parties in the country,” said Tate. “To watch (Republicans) sort of reel and careen back and forth is in many ways a microcosm what has been happening nationally in the Republican Party — which is ‘how do we handle the Donald Trump candidacy?’”

The party regulars who make up a large part of the Wisconsin delegation have mostly come around for Trump, out of partisan loyalty and a desire to beat Hillary Clinton. In interviews, many praised Trump’s choice of running mate Indiana Gov. Mike Pence as politically and philosophically reassuring.

Assembly Majority Speaker Leader Robin Vos, who has withheld his endorsement, said after arriving here that he “hopes” to get behind Trump in the coming days.

“Our base just wants somebody who can win. Donald Trump has to show this week that he can win and I think people will unify,” Vos said.

Despite his clashes with Trump during the primaries, Walker will speak Wednesday night at the convention, where he plans to argue that Democrat Hillary Clinton “is wholly unfit to be president,” he said in an email to supporters.

But prominent Republicans still couch their support for Trump more in terms of partisan obligation and political necessity than affection or enthusiasm for the candidate.

“One of the primary political duties with this job is not to dis-unify our party,” U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan told National Public Radio last week when asked about his support for Trump.

“There are lot of things that I don’t like that Trump has said, and there are a lot of things he could have said in a better way than he did. However ...he won the nomination fair and square,” said GOP congressman Jim Sensenbrenner, whose district gave Trump his biggest losing margin of any in the country in the presidential primaries.

Citing his party’s past success in Wisconsin, Sensenbrenner said, “We run the risk (in this election) of losing everything that we have stood for … as a result of disunity” over Trump.

Wisconsin’s role at this convention features several twists. The state swung hard against Trump in its April primary. Yet it will leave its stamp all over the Trump convention, with Ryan and national GOP chairman Reince Priebus presiding and six home-state Republicans speaking: Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke and U.S. Rep. Sean Duffy on Monday; Ryan and U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson on Tuesday; Walker on Wednesday; and Priebus on Thursday.

Wisconsin is the only state Trump lost that was given front-row delegate seating in the convention arena, thanks to its clout in RNC.

And it has played a prominent but conflicting role in the intraparty battles over Trump.

In the run-up to the convention, Wisconsin Republicans – Priebus, Buestrin and fellow RNC member Steve King — helped squelch efforts by anti-Trump forces to release delegates from their pledges.

But Wisconsin is also home to notable Trump opponents in the party: conservative activist Eric O’Keefe, an organizer of the effort to unbind delegates; “Never Trump” congressman Reid Ribble; and former state party chairman Michael Grebe, who gave up his slot at this convention “because I do not want to be part of a process which results in the nomination of Donald Trump.”

That one-sentence declaration by Grebe earlier this month stung some Republicans because of his long history in the party as a former counsel to the RNC; the man who ran the 1996 national convention in San Diego; and as a political godfather to Walker and Ryan.

Without naming anyone, Buestrin said she has been “shocked” that some “good, strong party people” have continued to withhold their support for Trump.

“I can’t understand it, because I’m a party person. Admittedly, he wasn’t my first choice but he is now,” she said. “And I will work hard to elect him, and that’s what they should be doing, too, instead of badmouthing him. I mean, ‘Just keep your mouth shut.’ That’s the way I feel.”

Thiensville village president Van Mobley was one of the few elected officials in the state who backed Trump before the primary.

“I think in this case I had better judgment than other people about the strength of his candidacy,” said Mobley, who was added to the Wisconsin delegation in Cleveland when someone else dropped out.

He called Trump’s double-digit defeat in Wisconsin “one of the great mysteries of my life,” but said, “I see the party coming back together.”

GOP voters in the state have begun to coalesce behind Trump, polls suggest.

Back in March, only 36% of Republican voters in Wisconsin viewed Trump favorably, according to a poll by the Marquette Law School. In June, 58% did. And in July, 64% do.

But the party’s voters are still less unified behind Trump than Democrats are behind Clinton in Wisconsin and less unified than Republicans were behind nominee Mitt Romney at this stage in 2012.

A quarter of GOP voters in the state still have a negative view of Trump, and 35% remain uncomfortable with him as president.

“I’ve always believed in politics you can’t make the perfect the enemy of the good,” said Sensenbrenner.

Asked if that is a persuasive argument to his GOP constituents that voted by large margins against Trump in the primary, Sensenbrenner said: “We’ll see.”